Things I Know I Know

A couple of days ago there was a discussion going on across several weblogs, including TalkLeft, on jury nullification. Clay Conrad, author of the book, Jury Nullification, weighed in.

Among his comments:

Jurors have a role to play as a pressure valve, as a regulator, in the American system of justice. We shouldn't try to seal off the safety valves too tightly, because when the pressure builds up it should be released. Thanks to the war on drugs and our increasingly prosecutorial society, the pressure can get pretty intense sometime.

We keep trying to remove 'the people' from we the people, from of the people, from by the people, from for the people. We make sure protestors are cordoned off somewhere well out of sight, restrict elected officials' appearance to staged photo opps, talk to 'community' and 'business' leaders, but never to regular people like you and me.

We reduce the role of the people to binary choices in a world that, except for the chip inside the computer, is not binary. You can find a defendant guilty or not guilty, but you can't say this is a stupid, anti-Constitutional law that should hever have existed in the first place. You can vote for this guy here or this other guy over here, but you can't have a real voice in the process (or at least if you do have a voice, no one will hear you when you use it). You can express your opinion in polls, but you can't ask thought-provoking questions and we won't answer you anyway.

The people are the process. Collectively, we can make decisions of great fairness and complexity. We can also make remarkably stupid decisions. But, you know what? Everyone does, including the three branches of government, the military, law enforcement officials, and the super-rich heads of corporations. And, you know, it is a pain to have to get input from your fellow couuntry men and women. It's messy and noisy and tiring. But it is also right. No, it's not merely right, it's the fundamental underpinning of democracy. It's what we signed on for!